April 25, 2015

Finest Hour 119, Summer 2003

Page 48

Winston Churchill reflects on the public image of his grandfather.

AN INTERVIEW WITH JEANETTE HANISEE GABRIEL CONTINUED FROM LAST ISSUE


Jeanette Gabriel: Let’s return to your grandfather later on. You knew him intimately. Why do you think people have such a love for this man, with all his faults, real or imagined? People all over the world feel this way.

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Winston Churchill: He was a very lovable human being, but what I think it comes down to is this: On the day my grandfather became Prime Minister, Hitler launched his Blitzkrieg against France and the low countries, and the British people in their hour of need turned to him. Had it not been for him, I firmly believe that Britain would have surrendered in the summer of 1940. The situation on its face was hopeless. By midJune the huge French Army, many time the size of ours, had surrendered. Hitler was the master of Europe.

With Britain out, Hitler’s troops would have gone East, defeated Stalin, since he’d have had all his force. Having made a meal of the Russians, he would have come back and devoted his attentions to us, and the full operations of the Gestapo and the concentration camps would have been established here. There would have been no possibility of the United States launching a D-Day type liberation from three thousand miles away across the Atlantic.

You talk of the love that people have of him. In 1992 I was asked to address the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. After my speech an attractive elderly lady came up to me, and said, “I was a girl of fourteen in the ghetto. Fighting was going on all around. We would listen to your grandfather’s broadcasts on the BBC. I couldn’t understand English—but I understood completely his sentiments. I knew that if we had any chance of surviving this war, all our hopes focused on him. I ended up in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I was liberated by British troops, in particular by one who is now my husband.”

JHG: Was your grandfather aware of what he had accomplished?

WSC: He never said as much, but he knew. But he did say, in 1954: “It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”

JHG: He seemed to have strong feelings that destiny prepared him for that role.

WSC: Indeed so. Martin Gilbert’s In Search of Churchill cites an extraordinary episode, an interview with my grandfather’s schoolmate, Murland Evans. It occurred when they were both sixteen, in 1891. “We frankly discussed our futures,” Evans said. “After placing me in the Diplomatic Service…or alternatively in finance, following my father’s career, we came to his own future. ‘Will you go into the army?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know, it is probable, but I shall have great adventures beginning soon after I leave here.’
Are you going into politics? Following your famous father?’ ‘I don’t know, but it is more than likely because, you see, I am not afraid to speak in public…but I have a wonderful idea of where I shall be eventually. I have dreams about it. I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world. Great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger—London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defense of London.’

‘”How can you talk like that? We are forever safe from invasion, have been since the days of Napoleon.’ ‘I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. This country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know. But I tell you I shall be in command of the defenses of London and I shall save London and England from disaster.’ ‘Will you be a general then, in command of the troops?’ ‘I don’t know; dreams of the future are blurred. But the main objective is clear. I repeat—London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital and save the Empire.'”

Such a preposterous remark for a sixteen-year-old! It was the sort of thing you get your ears boxed for.

JHG: It’s unbelievable.

WSC: It’s incredible to me. But this explains how absolutely reckless and foolhardy he was on the battlefield. He wanted to be noticed, not for vainglorious reasons. He wanted to make his name, to get medals. He sought a reputation for courage and heroism in the battlefield because there were only two ways you could launch a political career: One was to have a lot of money and the other was to have a name. He didn’t have money, so he needed a name, and he built it in the muzzle of a gun. He was convinced he was bulletproof. He had a rendezvous with Destiny.


Churchill Centre Associate Jeanette Gabriel is an art historian and curator. The Orpen painting appeared on last issue’s cover.

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